ALEXANDRIA, VA.—For many broadcasters,
live news operations are the
most important feature of their local
service—exactly the reason why the
FCC granted them licenses in the
first place. The lifeline broadcasters
use for live news is the Broadcast
Auxiliary Service spectrum from
2025 to 2110 MHz, which they use
to establish broadcast-quality remote
links from crime and disaster scenes.

Less than three years after an expensive
and lengthy retuning of the
BAS band at the request of the cellular
industry, that industry’s trade
association is recommending to the
FCC that the BAS band be restructured
again. The result of that request
would be to auction off 15 MHz of
BAS bandwidth to wireless companies
for mobile broadband services.

“[This band] has favorable spectrum
propagation characteristics, and
is contiguous and adjacent to current
mobile broadband allocations,” said
Scott Bergmann, assistant vice president,
regulatory affairs for CTIA-The
Wireless Association. “Given these
characteristics and the promise of
pairing this band with the 1695-1710
MHz band, identified by the National
Telecommunications and Information
Administration for reallocation
for commercial mobile broadband
use, CTIA believes that the band is
ideally suited for mobile broadband
and should be carefully examined by
the FCC.”

FINITE RESOURCE

The wireless industry’s problem is
that demand for wireless connectivity
is exploding, while spectrum
to carry the signals is a finite resource.

Dennis Wharton, executive vice president for communications for the National Association of Broadcasters

“In 2012, mobile video traffic
exceeded 50 percent of wireless
traffic for the first time,”
Bergmann said. “By 2017, it is
projected that two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video—
a 16-fold increase from 2012 to 2017.”

Many in the television industry will recall
that Nextel, which later became Sprint
Nextel, was awarded a slice of the 2 GHz
BAS spectrum in 2004. That kicked off the
Sprint Nextel 2 GHz relocation project,
which started at the end of 2004 and ran
for more than five and a half years. The 2
GHz relocation project reportedly cost
Sprint Nextel around $750 million, which
was used to replace microwave equipment
at most of the nation’s full-power TV stations.

MORE-OR-LESS SATISFIED

Although there was a great deal of grumbling
from broadcasters at the beginning of
the Sprint Nextel project, the industry was
more-or-less satisfied with the result when
it was completed in August 2010. At that
time, NAB’s president and CEO Gordon H.
Smith congratulated the wireless industry
on how the relocation effort was handled.

“The National Association of Broacasters
congratulates Sprint on completing the
herculean task of transitioning the broadcast
auxiliary services to a new, more efficient
spectrum plan in the 2 GHz frequency
band,” Smith said at the time. “NAB’s
members worked closely with Sprint’s network
of engineers, technicians and other
skilled personnel. We applaud the successful
result that we all achieved, despite the
highly complex, comprehensive nature of
the BAS transition.”

The warm feelings at the end of the
Sprint Nextel project have dissipated and
the NAB is now sounding a skeptical note
about the latest attempt to acquire another
chunk of spectrum that broadcasters rely
on.

“Broadcasters were able to relinquish
some BAS spectrum a few years ago because
it coincided with a switch from analog
to digital, which enabled broadcasters
to more efficiently use a smaller amount
of BAS spectrum,” said Dennis Wharton,
executive vice president for communications
for the NAB. “We know that a dedicated
BAS spectrum band serves as a safety
net to ensure we’re able to cover breaking
news as it happens and inform people
about encroaching danger, without worrying
about potential interference from mobile
broadband. Auctioning off more BAS
spectrum for wireless broadband would
put in jeopardy broadcasters’ role as first
informers.”

Getting access to spectrum now lawfully
used by broadcasters will take a serious
proposal, and wireless customers
using their cellphones to watch cat videos
dosn’t have the gravitas necessary to make
the case. Therefore, the CTIA and cellular
companies are moving to carry more of
the emergency warning burden that’s now
firmly the responsibility of broadcasters.

The NAB’s Wharton thinks that would
be a dangerous move.

“Anyone who lived in ‘Superstorm Sandy’’
s path can tell you about the cellphone
network outages the storm caused, as
we’ve seen time and again during emergencies,”
he said. “Even when cellular service
does not crash, the one-to-one architecture
of cell networks becomes congested, in
contrast to broadcasting’s ability to reach
whole communities via its one-to-everyone
architecture.”

REPLACE EAS?

As for using a cellular service to replace
the current Emergency Alert System, Wharton
thinks that is unfeasible.

“Wireless emergency alerts are limited
to messages of 90 characters—just enough
to tell people to tune into their local TV or
radio station,” he said. “In contrast, broadcasters
can provide continuous reporting
from the field covering all aspects of an
emergency.”

Still, the CTIA and the companies that it
represents are powerful, and Congress and
the Obama administration are attuned to
the concept of getting more connectivity
for their constituents. The Sprint Nextel 2
GHz relocation showed that broadcasters
could be flexible in releasing some of their
BAS spectrum, so there may be an assumption
that it would be reasonable to dip
again into the same spectrum well.

“Congress directed the FCC to identify,
reallocate, auction, and license its 15 MHz
of spectrum by February 2015,” CTIA’s
Bergmann said. “We hope that the FCC will
seek comment on reallocating the 2095-
2110 [MHz segment] for mobile broadband
use, and expect that the FCC would
work with all interested parties to develop
an appropriate relocation schedule.”

A knowledgeable insider at the Sprint
Nextel 2 GHz relocation project said that
a second relocation would probably be
quicker and less expensive than the one
Sprint undertook because of all the new
equipment available, as well as the better
understanding the broadcasters and manufacturers
should have of broadcasters’
systems. However, completing it by February
2015 doesn’t seem likely considering
that there is not even an agreement that
the spectrum will be given to the wireless
companies.

According to CTIA, reported wireless
data traffic from July 2011 to June 2012 over
all U.S. wireless devices totaled 1.16 trillion
megabytes, compared to 568 billion megabytes
the year before. That’s a year-over-year
increase of 104 percent.

There are two ways to look at the resources
necessary for wireless companies
to provide the required bandwidth to their
customers. One is by them acquiring and
using more spectrum, which also means
that cellular customers will need new
phones and wireless devices to connect to
the new spectrum.

The other is for wireless companies to
acquire and outfit more cellular “towers,”
whether they be actual towers, buildings
or other structures. Neither of these is inexpensive,
and both are likely going to be necessary
for the wireless industry to reach its
projections for the next few years.

The FCC will have to decide if the BAS
spectrum is the right place to feed the
seemingly insatiable wireless industry.